Women who refuse sex on first date 'increase chances of finding a good man'

Playing hard to get increases a woman's chance of finding a "good" man, mathematicians have found.

Professor Robert Seymour, from University College London (UCL) said: 'By delaying mating, the female is able to reduce the chance that she will mate with a bad male'Photo: GETTY

By Kate Devlin

4:33PM GMT 16 Jan 2009

A new study shows prolonging the mating courtship and refusing to sleep with a partner on the first date could be one of the keys to making a successful match.

Researchers used a mathematical model to show that more reliable men were willing to wait longer before having sex for the first time.

By contrast, less suitable men were not as likely to continue dating.

Professor Robert Seymour, from University College London (UCL), who created the model, said: "Longer courtship is a way for the female to acquire information about the male.

"By delaying mating, the female is able to reduce the chance that she will mate with a bad male.

"A male's willingness to court for a long time is a signal that he is likely to be a good male.

"Long courtship is a price paid for increasing the chance that mating, if it occurs, will be a harmonious match which benefits both sexes. This may help to explain the commonly held belief that a woman is best advised not to sleep with a man on a first date."

Dr Peter Sozou, from Warwick Medical School and LSE Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, who helped to construct the model, warned that the strategy was not foolproof.

He said: "The strategic problem the female faces is how to screen out bad males, and this is where long courtship comes into play.

"A male is assumed to always want to mate with a female, but a good male is more willing to pay the cost of a long courtship in order to claim the prize of mating.

"The female's strategy is a compromise - a trade-off between on the one hand the greater risk of mating with a bad male if she mates too quickly, and on the other hand the time cost of delay.

"Under this compromise there remains some risk that she will mate with the wrong type of male.

"She cannot eliminate this risk completely unless she decides never to mate."